2026 Plenary Speakers
Prof. Federico Capasso
Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Federico Capasso holds a Physics Doctorate from the University of Roma, La Sapienza. He is Robert Wallace Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard University, which he joined in 2003 after 27 years at Bell Labs. His key contributions include the invention of the quantum cascade laser, metasurface optics and the demonstration of repulsive Casimir forces.
Prof. Dirk R. Englund
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
Dirk Englund leads the Quantum Photonics and AI (QP&AI) group at MIT, where his research spans optoelectronic systems, quantum information science, and artificial intelligence. He is a principal investigator in both the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) and the Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL).
Englund earned his BS in Physics from Caltech, followed by a Fulbright year at TU Eindhoven, and completed his MS and PhD at Stanford University. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, he launched his academic career at Columbia University before joining MIT in 2013.
His honors include the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE), Sloan Fellowship, DARPA Young Faculty Award, and the Optica Adolph Lomb Medal. He is a Fellow of Optica and IEEE, a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher, and recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship. He is also a co-founder and scientific advisor to several technology companies.
Dr. Franco Nori
Team Director at the Quantum Computing Center, RIKEN, Japan
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Franco Nori is a Team Director at the Quantum Computing Center, RIKEN, Japan. Until 2025, he was a Chief Scientist at RIKEN. He also holds a concurrent position at the University of Michigan. His research group has done pioneering interdisciplinary studies at the interface between quantum optics, quantum information processing, superconducting quantum circuitry for quantum computing, photonics, atomic physics, open quantum systems, opto-mechanics, nanoscience, and condensed matter physics.
Nori completed his MS and PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After a postdoctoral position at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at UCSB, he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan, and then in 2002, a concurrent position at RIKEN.
He has been listed by the Web of Science as a “Highly Cited Researcher” (less than 0.1% of scientists are selected) in Physics for the past eight consecutive years.
He is an Elected Fellow of the APS, IoP, AAAS, and Optica. He received the 2014 Prize for Research in Physics, from the Matsuo Foundation, Japan; and the 2013 Prize for Science, by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan. Also, an “Excellence in Research Award” and an “Excellence in Education Award” from the University of Michigan. He is an Elected Member of the Academia Europaea, the Latin American Academy of Sciences, and a Foreign Member of the Swedish Royal Society of Arts and Sciences, in Gothenburg, Sweden. He won the 2023 W.E. Lamb Medal, and the 2024 Charles H. Townes Medal; both for fundamental contributions to research on Quantum Optics, Quantum Electronics, and Quantum Information. In 2024, he received a Research Honorary Doctorate in Physics, from the University of Messina, Italy.
Prof. Nathalie Picqué
Max Born Institute, Germany
Nathalie Picqué is Director at the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy and Professor of Physics at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. She and her team explore new insights in optical and molecular fundamental physics with advancing tools of laser science. Nathalie Picqué is a pioneer in the development and application of techniques of interferometry over broad spectral bandwidths with optical frequency combs. An Optica Fellow, N. Picqué is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2024 William F. Meggers Award of Optica.
